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Staff Report November 8, 2018NewsComments Off on DEVELOPING: CBP Reschedules ‘Crowd Control’ Exercise for Friday; Press, Public Not Invited

Only a few days removed from the original scheduled date, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Officials announced Thursday evening their ‘crowd control exercise’ would go on Friday morning in Chihuahuita, without press or the public present.

According to the email, officials said Friday’s exercise would again include Border Patrol ‘assets and participants,’ however the main difference would be that the exercise would be ‘closed to the public and media representatives,’ citing safety purposes.

The training, originally scheduled for Election Day, November 6th, was abruptly cancelled with out warning that same morning.

Armored vehicles, Border Patrol trucks with horse trailers in tow, as well as the familiar white and green clad trucks had all gathered within a few steps of one of the city’s oldest neighborhood, only to quickly be removed.

On Tuesday, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Officials filed an official complaint with the Department of Justice, alleging the

Map courtesy GOOGLE

original date was a form of voter intimidation.

The area where the demonstration was slated to be held is in the heart of the Chihuahuita neighborhood in South El Paso. The

neighborhood is a historically poor, Hispanic community that winds along the Rio Grande River.

On Tuesday, when directly asked by the Herald Post why the exercise was canceled at the last minute, public affairs officers said they were not given a reason.

The construction of a $22 million Border Wall in Downtown El Paso will begin on Saturday, according to Border Patrol officials.

Funding for the project was earmarked in the 2017 Appropriations Bill as part of the President’s Executive Order 13767

Construction on the 18-foot steel bollard wall will replace current chain-link fencing that is currently in place. One mile of the steel structure will be built west of the Paso Del Norte Port of Entry and the remaining three miles will be east of the PDN Bridge and will join with an existing 12-foot steel fence that begins on near Fonseca Road along the Border Highway.

The contract for the wall’s construction was awarded to West Point Contractors of Tucson, Arizona on June 1, 2018 but was not announced to the public until September 18.

Border Patrol maintains that the area is a hotspot for illegal entry into the U.S. When asked to provide specific numbers of illegal crossings in the area, officials with the Border Patrol were unable to give specifics. Instead, they say that their experience working in the area is all the evidence needed to show the four mile stretch is at a higher susceptibility for illegal border crossings.

The construction project came as a surprise to many in the Chihuahuita community, city leaders and immigration advocates.

Border Network for Human Rights called the announcement of the construction at the last minute “unacceptable.”

Fernando Garcia with BNHR organizes a bi-annual event called “Hugs Not Walls” which unites families separated by the Border in the arroyo near the PDN Bridge. On Monday, officials with the Border Patrol contacted Garcia to inform him that a previously approved permit for October 6, was being rescinded due to the wall’s construction.

Hull said the Border Patrol will continue to work with community stakeholders in the future, but said border security is their top priority. He declined to state whether Hugs Not Walls would be able to continue at the conclusion of the wall’s construction.

The El Paso Sector Border says apprehensions in the 2018 Fiscal Year were up 61% over 2017. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a “zero tolerance” policy in April, which was enacted in May. The policy resulted in controversial family separation and the creation of ‘tent cities’ which housed children separated from their parents.

In response to the wall’s construction, the Border Network for Human Rights and a number of community activists and elected officials joined together to announce a community action demonstration for Saturday, September 22 at 10 a.m. at Cleveland Square to protest the construction project.

The demonstration is expected to move toward the Paso Del Norte Bridge.

Thanks to the quick action of Border Patrol agents, a migrant from El Salvador safely delivered a baby shortly after crossing into the US.

According to U.S. Border Patrol officials, while patrolling the border earlier this month, agents from Ysleta observed 11 migrants cross the international boundary four miles west of the Ysleta Port of Entry. Agents captured the group and they were transported to the Ysleta station for processing.

After arriving at the station, a 34-year- old female from El Salvador informed Agents that she was in her third trimester of pregnancy. While in custody, she began to complain of stomach pain. A female Border Patrol Agent quickly recognized that she was in fact experiencing labor pains, and sprang into action.

The Agent immediately began to comfort the expectant mother through breathing and relaxation techniques and EMS was contacted. The Agent gathered towels to prepare for the birth. Minutes later, a baby boy was delivered with the assistance of El Paso Fire and EMS personnel, who had arrived to the scene.

Both mother and child were then transported to Sierra Providence East Hospital for further medical care and evaluation.

On December 6, the mother and newborn were discharged from the hospital, and transported to the Temporary Holding Facility in Tornillo-Texas pending an immigration determination. The following morning, the new mom alerted agents at the facility that her newborn child appeared to be ill, and required medical attention.

Agents summoned EMS and subsequently transported the mother and child to El Paso Children’s Hospital, where the infant was admitted. The infant was treated and was released by the attending physician and is currently doing well.

Officials with the Border Patrol add that once they were deemed fit for travel, the baby and her mother were released from U.S. Border Patrol custody, pending an immigration hearing.

TUCSON, Ariz. – The U.S. Border Patrol purposely drives migrants into remote desert areas, causing hundreds to get lost and disappear in 2015. That’s one finding in a new report by two Tucson-based immigrants’ rights groups.

Researchers combed through reports made to the Missing Migrant Hotline of the group La Coalicion de Derechos Humanos, or Human Rights Coalition. They also surveyed dozens of people deported from Arizona to Nogales, Mexico.

Geoffrey Boyce, with the group No More Deaths, which coauthored the report with La Coalicion de Derechos Humanos, said they found 460 cases of people who vanished last year alone, most while crossing the Sonoran Desert, the Arizona Uplands or the brushlands of South Texas.

“Oftentimes, what we see are small groups of agents encountering large groups of people and essentially, scattering the groups,” he said. “Folks disappear into remote mountains and canyons and are never heard from again.”

The report estimates that 8,600 people have died trying to cross the borderlands from Mexico into the United States since the 1990s. The Border Patrol said it will have apprehended 400,000 people in fiscal year 2016, the lowest level since the early 1970s.

Boyce said the “chase and scatter” tactics are part of a “prevention through deterrence” strategy put into place with Operation Gatekeeper in 1994.

“It expressly stated their intention to push crossing out into these remote and hostile areas, to use it as a barrier to unlawful crossings,” he explained. “This is pushing people out further into harm’s way.”

The report concluded that there is no safe way to catch people trying to cross in remote areas. The groups are calling on Congress to rewrite immigration policy to make it more humane, and to work to alleviate the violence and poverty that motivate people to try to emigrate to the U.S.

Suzanne Potter, Public News Service – AZ

EL PASO, Texas – The ACLU is among the groups that have filed an administrative complaint against the Department of Homeland Security for confiscating money and property from individuals before deporting them.

The groups allege that immigration officials confiscated and failed to return personal belongings, exposing at least 26 people to greater risk of harm on their return to Mexico. Attorney Kristin Love with ACLU New Mexico said that without money or ID, people face extreme hardships in Mexico.

“People are deported to border cities far from where they are from without anything,” she said, “and have a very difficult time even paying for a place to stay when they’re on the border, or paying for food or getting a bus ticket home.”

Gillian Christensen, national press secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said her agency is investigating the complaints. She added that not returning belongings, money or identification prior to deportation is against agency policy.

During processing, Love said, ICE agents take a deportee’s belongings and put them in storage. It then becomes the deportee’s responsibility to claim those belongings or have a third party do so, something Love said is almost impossible when a person is in detention. She added that if the belongings are not claimed, they are destroyed.

“The Department of Homeland Security recently signed local repatriation arrangements with Mexico, saying that they would take all steps to ensure that belongings are back in the hands of their owners before their release from custody,” she said. “And yet, they haven’t taken even a reasonable step to ensure that this happened.”

Activists from Mexico and the United States jointly filed the complaint, Love said, adding that the majority of cases involved the El Paso Border Patrol Sector, which serves New Mexico and West Texas.

Some reports estimate that one in three people deported has his or her possessions confiscated and not returned.

The number of people apprehended by immigration agents while trying to enter Texas illegally dropped by more than 35 percent during the federal government’s 2015 fiscal year, according to Department of Homeland Security statistics released Tuesday.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents stopped some 210,470 people in Texas between October 2014 and September 2015, compared to 332,457 the previous year. On the entire southwestern border, 331,335 people were apprehended in the 2015 fiscal year, compared to 479,371 the year before.

Homeland security leaders attribute the dip to lower numbers of would-be illegal crossers and a ramped-up border security effort that has nearly doubled the number of agents on the southwestern border since 2001. The number of Mexican nationals apprehended decreased by 18 percent, they said; apprehensions of people from countries other than Mexico — mainly Central Americans — decreased by more than 65 percent.

The new data is not likely to allay the concerns of GOP state leaders, who argue the Obama administration is failing in its duty to secure the border and remove undocumented criminals already present in the country.

Last week, Gov. Greg Abbott announced that he’d be keeping National Guard troops on the state’s border with Mexico instead of sending them home as planned, the result of a spike in illegal crossings by minor children in the Rio Grande Valley in October and November of this year.

The Guard is deployed to assist federal agents and state troopers in surveillance and border crossings but has no arresting or removal powers.

The downward trend in federal apprehensions wasn’t just limited to the border; nationally, they decreased by about 30 percent between 2014 and 2015.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement also removed roughly 80,000 fewer undocumented people from the country — a total of 235,413 — in 2015 than the agency did the prior year.

During a conference call with reporters, homeland security officials said of Immigration and Customs Enforcement removals in 2015, about 86 percent were considered “Priority 1” — immigrants who pose a viable threat to national security, border security and public safety.

The 2015 totals also include roughly 40 percent fewer unaccompanied minors and family units.

Homeland security officials said their focus in 2016 would be “more interior enforcement” to return “convicted criminals” to their home countries.

SANTA TERESA, N.M – Border Patrol Agents intercepted another wanted sex offender trying to sneak back into the U.S on Monday, this time in Santa Teresa.

Agents on patrol near Sunland Park, New Mexico alertly located four men climbing through a hole in the international boundary fence in a notorious alien-smuggling area. Agents quickly responded and apprehended the group before they could reach the neighborhood.

Once in custody, all of the subjects admitted to being in the country illegally.

During processing it was discovered that 43-year-old from Mexico, Gilberto Izquierdo Ramirez had an active warrant for his arrest for failing to appear in court in regard to a charge of “Lewdness-with-a-Child Under-14”, which was filed back in September-2014.

Izquierdo Ramirez was transported to the Otero County Prison in New Mexico pending criminal prosecution and extradition to Reno Nevada, where the sex-offense charge had originally been filed. December 22, 2015.

Five suspected smugglers and over $250,000 in marijuana are off the streets this Thanksgiving Day Holiday thanks to the ongoing efforts by Border Patrol Agents.

On Monday night, shortly after 9:00 p.m., Border Patrol agents performing surveillance duties in Clint, discovered footprints of five subjects trespassing through a family-owned orchard. Agents tracked the footprints to a canal north of the international border where five persons were found lying on the ground.

Agents ordered the subjects to stand and discovered that each subject was trying to conceal a large bundle of what appeared to be illicit contraband. The five bundles contained a total of 319.5 pounds of marijuana, valued at $255,600.

LORDSBURG, New Mexico – Tracking at night is not meant for everyone, but Border Patrol Agents make it an art-form. Agents were faced with that challenge south of Lordsburg last night, and were able to foil yet another drug smuggling effort thanks to those highly developed skills.

On the morning of November 6th, Agents using night-vision technology spotted seven people walking in the desert with large backpacks who had illegally crossed the U.S./Mexico International Boundary. As Agents closed in on the group, three of the men were quickly apprehended and surrendered the backpacks they were carrying.

Four other unknown subjects left their backpacks behind as they quickly made their way back to Mexico. The backpacks contained what appeared to be marijuana bundles. Agents took the bundles to the Lordsburg Station for further inspection. The marijuana inside the five backpacks totaled 245 pounds, which has a street value of $196,000.

The Drug Enforcement Administration was contacted and will take custody of the three subjects and the marijuana.